Welcome to 1995
Been watching the Tenchi TV series lately. I had started to watch the original OVA a while back, but it got lost in the crowd with all the other things I was watching. I recently got the TV series collection for my birthday, and just decided to watch that given I like it a bit more than the OVA. Watching it now, I find the animation isn’t especially good, but it’s not bad either. It’s rather charming though. I simply love the look of these 90s cel-done productions, even if they are a little uneven at times. This is also the first time I’m watching it in Japanese, and I like it a lot better than watching it dubbed on the Cartoon Network and on VHS.
If you couldn’t already tell from all the image spam, Kiyone is my favourite Tenchi girl. She’s in about every Tenchi series (that I’ve seen, anyway– I skipped most of the spinoffs, but would like to give the Pretty Sammy stuff a whirl) except the original OVA (well save that special episode I never saw and should buy.) I liked her back when I was a prepubescent child simply because she was first anime girl that I saw naked, and thusly I fell in love. Now I appreciate her personality a lot more. She’s a lot like me when it comes to her approach to life and how she handles things, and to top it off she’s stunningly beautiful. Hair band ftw. It’s kind of funny to see how my tastes in women has changed, going from a woman like Kiyone, to Kaede, to lolis. I love them all for different reasons though.
Er, anyway. I’m really enjoying the Tenchi TV seires now, especially once all the characters are introduced. I think I prefer the TV series’ longer runtime, and its stronger focus on comedy. I still need to watch the OVA again, though. It’s great for a lot of its own reasons, even if it lacks Kiyone. One thing that strikes me about this series are the ideas of anime beauty in the mid ’90s compared to now. Tenchi was one of the forerunners of the harem genre that is so popular now, and it’s interesting to see just how much the genre has changed. I kind of wish I had a pulse on the otaku community in the ’90s, just to see how they reacted to a lot of these old shows I’m watching/re-watching now. Sometimes I just wish I was born in 1970s Japan so I’d be 20 right around when the ’90s started. But if that happened then I’d be even more jaded than I am now.
To close, I’ll link the opening, which fucking rocks. Nothing today has ANYTHING on this. Well, that’s not true but it’s pretty rad in any case.
kiyone <3.
For some reason I always liked Tenchi in Tokyo the most…probably because Tenchi actually got with someone (even if it wasn’t an actual character) rather than constantly being thrown between Ayeka and Ryouko. Pretty Sammy OVA was ok, first series meh and I didn’t even bother with the crap that came out last year.
Kiyone’s my favorite because she seems to be the voice of reason/common sense out of everyone there, and she was the only main female that didn’t really have an interest in Tenchi. :P